‘A Person is a Prayer’: A moving novel about the aches, regrets and longings each of us harbours

A Person is a Prayer begins by quoting Jon Fosse – “A person is a prayer through his or her longing”, and the novel, author Ammar Kalia’s debut, is a moving account of aches, regrets and longings every individual harbours. A highly nuanced portrait of familial ties and how they shape us and the exhausting work of “being” and “belonging” unto death, the novel shines a spotlight on marriage, parenting, ageing, losing a loved one and the ensuing grief. Centred around the culturally complex immigrant experience, the novel is a quiet exploration of what defines one’s “home” and “roots”.

A dreaded pilgrimage

Divided into three parts, with each part taking place on a day, years apart in time, the book moves in time and space, spanning three generations of a family and moving between India, Kenya and London. The book begins on March 19, 1955, with Bedi, a 25-year-old man visiting India to meet his prospective bride, Sushma. “In India, Bedi was a tourist, not a prodigal son”, for Bedi’s father who hailed from Rishikesh moves to Kenya to work on the railroads and raises his family there. Bedi, initially wary about impressing the girl and her family, eventually relaxes and bares his heart to Sushma. In part two, fast forward to the year 1994, we see Bedi and Sushma living in London, still married to each other. Their three children, Tara, Selena and Rohan are grown-up and married. Blessed with a grandson, Amman, Bedi and Sushma are waiting to welcome another one as Tara is pregnant with her second. Tragedy strikes the family when Sushma, out on a minor errand, dies in a road accident.

25 years later, on September 30, 2019, in part three of the book, the three siblings, their spouses and children arrive in India to immerse Bedi’s ashes in the river Ganga at Haridwar. On what Selena terms “a dreaded pilgrimage”, the initial curiosity to explore India – their “roots” is replaced by boredom and vexation as a wild goose chase to find the pandit with the right genealogical record, who can help complete Bedi’s last rites, begins. The siblings reflect intently upon the equations they shared with their dead parents, the relationship with their spouses and children, if their children would understand their efforts to assure them the freedom and opportunities they were denied if they understood their parents enough to yearn to be understood now?

Rich perspectives

“All that death really requires is our silence, that quiet sound of us packing it up and carrying it with us, knowing it will never, ever go away. It will always have the last word. And we’ll be there, struggling to hear.”

Death and grief are prominent motifs in the novel. And the disease cancer takes quite a toll. The need to communicate openly to close gaps in relationships, beautifully dealt with in the “coda” section of the book, is another topic highlighted. The author writes about an immigrant’s complex process of “belonging” and also tackles racism with great sensitivity. That greener pastures are abundant abroad is a myth he busts by giving a peek into hardships Bedi and his family face in Kenya and London. When Bedi advises his daughter not to accept acts of kindness from Whites and warns his children not to trust anyone when in India, we quietly wonder where Bedi and his family truly feel “at home”. Their brownness sets them apart both in Kenya and London. The nimble prose, neither too plain nor gaudy, helps offset the heaviness in themes and gives us many lines to underscore.

A Person is a Prayer is rich in perspective but deficient in plot. The character sketches, not very comprehensive, evolve based on either their dialogue or internal reflection. Though Bedi and Sushma discuss they could try something new together after their marriage, they lead decades together straitjacketed into orthodox roles of man and wife. Part three rendered from the point of view of the three siblings reveals that Tara comes with the patience and maturity that the eldest child in a family is usually blessed with, Selena is the argumentative and unpredictable rebel child and Rohan, the infantilised youngest one can barely shoulder responsibility without self-doubt or nervousness. As the three siblings bid farewell to their dead father, we see them struggle with emotions for a man – just a handful of grey dust enclosed in a box – who never gave them a hug, a handshake, or a pat on the shoulder.

Rohan ranting about his glasses as effeminate props and the pleasure of pissing after holding it for long when he is out to perform his father’s last rites feels grotesque. The three siblings get on your nerves with their paranoia over myriad infections lurking in the waters of Ganga, hygiene in Indian restaurants or anything “Indian”, That said, the acknowledgements and the author’s note indicate that the novel, a close reconstruction of his family, was written as a means of catharsis. For this, it garners brownie points.

A mother who is glad she has a few moments for herself when she steps out of home, a husband who wonders what will become of him if his wife died before him, a son vying for his father’s attention that a son-in-law easily elicits, a sister keeping her brother’s wife at bay like a sworn enemy, a child contemplating how he/she can earn an appreciative gesture from his/her father – a miscellany of snapshots of a family in a constant state of emotional flux makes A Person is a Prayer, a relatable and pretty earnest read.

A Person is a Prayer, Ammar Kalia, Penguin India.